1. Technical Field
This invention relates generally to racing competitions. More particularly, the invention relates to rocket-powered vehicle racing competitions including racing methods, rocket-powered vehicles, spaceports, methods of observer interaction and virtual participation in a rocket-powered vehicle racing competition, and related apparatus.
2. Background
Car racing is a well-established industry with such variants as the INDIANAPOLIS 500 races, NASCAR races and FORMULA-1 races. These racing competitions include a pre-specified car design, a specially designed track and direct viewing of the race by the general public in a stadium setting. Automobile races have been extremely successful in attracting very large corporate sponsorship and significant revenue from broadcast rights. These races have also lead to significant breakthroughs in automotive design and performance. Car racing, however, appeals to a limited audience that primarily includes race enthusiasts.
Yacht racing is also is a well-established industry with variants such as the LOUIS VUITTON AMERICA'S CUP competition. Similar to car racing, yacht racing competitions involve a pre-specified yacht design, a specially designed track and direct observation by the general public. Yacht races have also been extremely successful in attracting corporate sponsorship and significant revenue from broadcast rights, and have lead to significant breakthroughs in boating design and performance.
Manned rocket launches have traditionally been high visibility events that garner tremendous public interest beyond enthusiast groups, but which have never attracted significant sponsorships or media/broadcast rights. This is because rocket launches typically cannot be ‘scheduled’, as their actual launch time and date depend on when the payload and rocket are ready for deployment, and on weather conditions. Launch delays are commonplace and lead to great difficulty when scheduling network broadcast time. Networks may only pay for the broadcast of events that they know may occur as scheduled (e.g., football games, Olympic events, etc.). With regard to sponsorships, sponsors enjoy regularity and repeatability in the events that they sponsor (e.g., car races, golf classics, etc.). They also enjoy standardization in the event and in the location of their logos on the hardware or participants. They may require that the events have network coverage in order to extend the value of their sponsorship dollars to millions of eyeballs worldwide. Further, they desire that the events involve people (e.g., heroes) that participate in the events, which can make the launch of satellites by unmanned rockets uninteresting and inconsequential to the public.
Unfortunately, conventional manned rockets have been government owned and operated (e.g., the U.S. Space Shuttle and the Russian Soyuz), which do not actively market sponsorships. To promote the development and flight of rocket-powered vehicles able to provide low-cost commercial transport of humans into space outside of government sponsorship, the non-profit X PRIZE foundation has established the X PRIZE COMPETITION. The X PRIZE COMPETITION is a competition with a US $10,000,000 prize directed to jump starting the space tourism industry through competition between the most talented entrepreneurs and rocket experts in the world. The $10 million cash prize was awarded on Oct. 4, 2004 to Mojave Aerospace Ventures for being the first team that privately financed, built & launched a rocket-powered vehicle able to carry three people to 100 kilometers (62.5 miles), returned the rocket-powered vehicle safely to Earth, and repeated the launch with the same vehicle within 2 weeks.
Note that the following discussion refers to a number of publications by author(s) and year of publication, and that due to recent publication dates certain publications are not to be considered as prior art vis-a-vis the present invention. Discussion of such publications herein is given for more complete background and is not to be construed as an admission that such publications are prior art for patentability determination purposes.
FIG. 1 illustrates the X PRIZE COMPETITION. As shown, the winning team launches manned rocket-powered vehicle 2 to an altitude greater than 100 km twice within a two-week period. Rocket-powered vehicle 2 may be launched at a location and a time of the respective team's choosing. The competition is a “first to accomplish” competition, in which the winning team is the first one to accomplish the established criteria. Although the X PRIZE COMPETITION is an excellent introduction into the realm of privately owned rocket-powered vehicles, it does not lend itself to public involvement in a competition atmosphere and to the marketing interest of other competitions, such as car racing and yacht racing competitions.